Life Experiment 29, 2021

Hey There.

After a day of meetings at work, I was a bit pissed (sth. new). Meetings went reasonably OK, but there were a few minor irritations that popped up. I kind of suspected that it will be a bad day, and it was a bad day.

But was the day "bad" because I imagined that it will be bad?

OK, let's not get too philosophical here, but yes, to some extent, our expectations can result in specific outcomes. Sure some of the outcomes are out of our control, but how we react to those outcomes is entirely in our control.

I can "control" my anger at the moment when someone irritates me but then later spill the anger onto the people close to me. Something they absolutely didn't sign up for.

So the next day, as I was driving back to the capital after the morning run, I asked myself:

What will I do about those internal emotional eruptions?

I can't prevent people from saying/doing illogical stuff that irritates me.

But can I figure out how to not get worked entirely up every damn time?

So I asked Indy :

Why do we allow some of the negative emotions to amplify so much? Why do we blow up the "badness" of the situation out of proportions?

He pointed me towards What Is the Negativity Bias? .

Which nails my "mind's response" to the teeth. In short, Negativity bias means that we are:

• Overemplafying how bad something was.
• Giving more considerable weight to negative events/emotions than to the positive ones.

How you catch yourself when you fell under the Negativity bias is up to you. Journaling, trying to cool down when something upsets you and then analysing your reaction will probably do the trick.

So. First decompression.

Decompression

I talked about this before, but it never hurts to mention it again. Whenever I have a shitty day, I make sure to recover my mental state ASAP.

Take the morning off and:

• 1.) Live near a pretty lake.
• 2.) Go for a morning run.
• 3.) Enjoy the first cup of tea in the sun.

• 4.) Long drive to the capital.
• 5.) Hot shower.
• 6.) Get a good chill breakfast at the capital in your favourite tea house.
• 7.) Whatever life throws at you.

Yeah, I know it takes that little to calm my nerves 😂 And yes, that's one of my go-to recipes when shit hits the fan. Or when I feel like I'm upset for whatever stupid reason.

Will this simple essay do the trick? Solve the issue of my eruptions?

Probably I'll have to do more than journal about the problem once, but:

First step in solving any problem is recognising that you have one.

Enjoy

Ziga